VARRO, " the most learned of the Romans,•' so called from his vast erudition in almost every department of literature, was b. 116 B.C., and educated first under L. 2Elius Stilo Prreconinus, and then under Antiochus, a philosopher of the academy. Varro served with distinction in the wars against the Mediterranean pirates and Mithri dates; but afterward as legatus of Pompey in Spain, he was compelled to surrender his forces to Ciesar. He continued to share the fortunes of the Pompeian party till its defeat at Pharsalia, after which he solicited and obtained his pardon from Cesar, by whom he was employed to collect and arrange the great library designed for the public. The next period in Varro's life was spent in literary retirement, chiefly at his villas near Cum and Tusculum. When the 2d triumvirate was formed, his name was enrolled iu the list of the proscribed; but he succeeded in escaping, and, after some time spent in concealment, he was received under the protection of Octavian. The residue of his long life was spent in the tranquil prosecution of his favorite studies, rendered all the more arduous by the destruction of his magnificent library. He died in his 89th year, 23 B.C. Varro was not only the most learned, but also the most prolific of Roman authors. He himself confesses to having composed no fewer than 490 books; but only two of these have survived, and one of themin a fragmentary state. The most considerable of his writings, whether lost or extant, are as follows: 1. De Re Rustied, Ltbri. ///., still extant, and though written in the author's 81st year, constituting the most important treatise on ancient agriculture known to us. 2. De Lingua Latina, a grammatical
work, which originally extended to 24 books, only 6 of which, however, have come down to us, and even these in an imperfect form. But for this treatise, mutilated as it is, we should be ignorant of many terms and forms, as well as of much recondite information regarding the civil and religious usages of the ancient Romans. 3. Senten tice, consisting of 165 pregnant sayings strung together, not by Varro himself, but probably by different hands at different times. 4. Antiquitaturn Libra, comprising two sections, the Antiquitates Reruns Hitmanarum, in 25 books, and the Antiquitates Rerum. Divinarum, in 16 books. This, the greatest work of Varro, and on which his reputa Lion for learning was mainly founded, has unfortunately perished, all but a few frag ments. From the 2d section St. Augustine drew much of his well-known work, the City of God. 5. Saturn, composed in various meters, and occasionally in prose. These pieces, copied to some extent from the productions of Menippus the Gadarene, were apparently a series of comments on a great variety of subjects, generally conveyed in the form of dialogue, and aiming at the enforcement of some moral lesson or serious truth in a familiar and even jocular style. Of these we have only fragments; and of the other works little more than the titles. The best edition of the De Re Rustiest is that of Schneider (Leip. 1794-97); of the De Lingua Latinci, that of Muller (Leip. 1833)